We'll miss those work of art graphs and story reveals....come back ISF as soon as you can! 
But if you are a she, as Steven seems certain, when you are back with us maybe change your gender status on your profile from M?

SMC1809 wrote:

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Didn't we establish ISF is male?

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Yes I'm sure we did.

I was gratified to find I wasn't the only one who thought "he" was a "she" - somehting to do with his avatar I suspect!

Anyway, yes we do miss you ISF - hope you'll be back on here very soon!

steven wrote:

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What I hadn't realised was that members banned by IP address can't even read the forum as a guest, yet alone access messages. However, thankfully ISF has since registered on Twitter and contacted me so we can keep in touch by DMs while this gets sorted out and she had already guessed that it was a complete mistake.

I've been reading as much as I can about the Activeboard admin functions but can't find a way to undo an IP ban. However, it looks like while admins can do more than mods, the site owner can do even more, so maybe Sheddie can help - if you're reading this without logging on, David, there should be a pm waiting for you!

Given how easy Activeboard makes it to impose an IP ban by mistake, it would be ridiculous if there wasn't a way to undo it, so if David can't find a way, we'll probably need to get in touch with Activeboard.

While reading about admin functions, I found out that there are two ways to ban posters - by name and by IP address ... and also that the modding option set for wolf didn't include banning people anyway, so unless he has unset that option himself in order to avoid the risk of doing it again, something must be going wrong.

Despite it saying "M" on the profile, I've been reliably informed by another mod who knows her name that ISF is female. However, if ISF wishes to remain ambiguous, that's up to her (or him!) - I'm far more concerned to find a way to ensure that a very good poster is able to post again!

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Definitely!

Good luck

Hello!
Thank you very much to Sheddie and Steven for the help.

This actually turned out to be quite a useful little exercise, all things considered.

I can confirm the following:
When your IP is banned, you can't see the forum at all. What you see is the 'BRITISH TENNIS' logo, and the members log in box.
The list of sections and sub-forums does not show up at all. All you see on the rest of the page is the message: "This IP was banned"
If you attempt to log in, or create a new account, it makes no difference, the page just refreshes to show that message.
You therefore cannot see anything, read anything, receive messages - nothing.

If you use Google's cached versions of webpages, you can see pages, but you cannot click on any links or the page reverts to the live instance displaying that you were banned. You also need very specific searches to find the cache of the section/thread you are looking for.
The Google cache version for ActiveBoard seems generally to be about 1½-2 days behind the live forum, and so is not a viable alternative.

Steven had very kindly detailed some suggestions on Twitter about IP addresses and changing them to evade the ban.
I had actually tried these previously, and none of the following worked - the last three surprised me, to say the least!:

• Switching browser
• Going Incognito in a browser
• Going in to a Command Prompt (Windows), releasing and refreshing the IP addresses and the DNS for the computer
• Re-starting the machine
• I have 5 computers able to access the internet. Using any of those different computers and trying all of the above made no difference.
• Re-starting the router
• Re-setting the router to it's factory defaults
• Using a different, PAYG, router to access. My access is a static modem, but I also have a separate fob modem for some work requirements. Using that made no difference.
• Setting up a dynamic IP address for a machine
• Using a VPN to attempt access 

* I honestly don't know what sort of blocking technology ActiveBoard are using that it can stop the VPN route, but many commercial companies and government agencies would be very interested in hearing from them!

For reasons discussed at length many years ago, I am unable to get out of the house to try the other obvious thing of physically going somewhere else to attempt access, so am unable to report on the efficacy of that.

The only thing that did work was the Administrative function that Sheddie used to reverse the ban.
So, there you go, we all learned something a bit useful about Active board.

Absolutely no hard feelings
Quite the contrary, it's good to know the option for so comprehensive a ban is available, should the need ever arise, and it once again confirms how helpful everyone is here.

Thank you